Ariel Castro Pleads Not Guilty in Ohio Kidnap Case

A Cleveland man has pleaded not guilty to holding three women captive in his home for a decade and raping them.

Fifty-two-year-old Ariel Castro was arraigned Wednesday on an indictment charging him with murder, kidnapping and rape in more than 300 counts.

The murder charge involves Castro's allegedly starving and punching a pregnant woman in captivity until she miscarried.

A Cuyahoga (ky-uh-HOH'-guh) County grand jury returned the indictment Friday against the former Cleveland school bus driver, who was fired last fall.

His $8 million dollar bond was continued.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

A man accused of holding three women captive in his Cleveland home for about a decade was scheduled for his first court appearance Wednesday to answer to hundreds of charges, including rape and kidnapping.

Ariel Castro is charged with kidnapping the three women and keeping them - sometimes restrained in chains - along with a 6-year-old girl he fathered with one of them.

A grand jury charged Castro with two counts of aggravated murder related to one act, saying he purposely caused the unlawful termination of one of the women's pregnancies. He also was indicted on 139 counts of rape, 177 counts of kidnapping, seven counts of gross sexual imposition, three counts of felonious assault and one count of possession of criminal tools.

Last week's 142-page indictment covers only the period from August 2002, when the first victim disappeared, to February 2007. Prosecutors say the investigation will continue and they are leaving the door open to pursuing a death penalty case against Castro.

News that the women had been found alive electrified the Cleveland area, where two of the victims were household names after years of searches, publicity and vigils. But elation soon turned to shock as allegations about their treatment began to emerge.

The indictment against Castro alleges he repeatedly restrained the women, sometimes chaining them to a pole in a basement, to a bedroom heater or inside a van. It says one of the women tried to escape and he assaulted her with a vacuum cord around her neck.

Later, he moved them to upstairs rooms where they were kept as virtual prisoners, according to investigators.

All the while, Castro continued driving a school bus and playing bass in local bands, with fellow musicians saying they never suspected a thing. He was fired as a bus driver last fall after leaving his bus unattended for several hours.

Castro has been held on $8 million bail. Last week he was taken off suicide prevention watch in jail. Cuyahoga County jail logs show him spending most of his time sleeping, lying on his bunk, watching TV and occasionally drawing.

Castro was arrested May 6, shortly after one of the women broke through a door and yelled to neighbors for help.

She told a police dispatcher in a dramatic 911 call: "Help me. I'm Amanda Berry. I've been kidnapped, and I've been missing for 10 years, and I'm, I'm here, I'm free now."

The women - Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight - disappeared separately between 2002 and 2004, when they were 14, 16 and 20 years old. Each said they had accepted a ride from Castro, who remained friends with DeJesus' family and even attended vigils over the years marking her disappearance.